nd also gave
him some words in broken English. At the same time I showed I thought
him an impertinent nuisance, paid my score and walked out--quit of
him? Not a bit of it! He insisted on showing me the way to
Dornumersiel, and followed me down the street. Perceiving that he was
in liquor, in spite of the early hour, I dared not risk a quarrelsome
scene with a man who already knew so much about me, and might at any
moment elicit more. So I melted, and humoured him; treated him in a
ginshop in the hope of giving him the slip--a disastrous resource,
which was made a precedent for further potations elsewhere. I would
gladly draw a veil over our scandalous progress through peaceable
Dornum, of the terrors I experienced when he introduced me as his
friend, and as his English friend, and of the abasement I felt, too,
as, linked arm in arm, we trod the three miles of road coastwards. It
was his malicious whim that we should talk English; a fortunate whim,
as it turned out, because I knew no fo'c'sle German, but had a
smattering of fo'c'sle English, gathered from Cutcliffe Hyne and
Kipling. With these I extemporized a disreputable hybrid, mostly
consisting of oaths and blasphemies, and so yarned of imaginary
voyages. Of course he knew every port in the world, but happily was
none too critical, owing to repeated _schnappsen._

Nevertheless, it was a deplorable _contretemps_ from every point of
view. I was wasting my time, for the road took a different direction
to the Neues Tief, so that I had not even the advantage of inspecting
the canal and only met with it when we reached the sea. Here it split
into two mouths, both furnished with locks, and emptying into two
little mud-hole harbours, replicas of Bensersiel, each owning its
cluster of houses. I made straight for the _Gasthaus_ at
Dornumersiel, primed my companion well, and asked him to wait while I
saw about a boat in the harbour; but, needless to say, I never
rejoined him. I just took a cursory look at the left-hand harbour,
saw a lighter locking through (for the tide was high), and then
walked as fast as my legs would carry me to the outermost dyke,
mounted it, and strode along the sea westwards in the teeth of a
smart shower of rain, full of deep apprehensions as to the stir and
gossip my disappearance might cause if my odious crimp was sober
enough to discover it. As soon as I deemed it safe, I dropped on to
the sand and ran till I could run no more. Then I sat on my bun